Happy New Year 🪅🎉🥳

Goodbye 2020 and good riddance.

Thank you all for sharing the journey with me. Thank you for the questions, comments, gifs. We got through 2020. 2021 will be better.

2021 will be the year to Make Democracy Cool Again.

How about a few resolutions?

#1: Run for Something

(or help someone else run for something)

Want to really make a difference in politics and government? Don’t just march, @runforsomething.

Make sure things are done right. Be the person in charge.

https://t.co/gGCVWFnUo7
#2: If you can’t run for something, find someone you know who would be terrific, and encourage that person to run.

You can also volunteer to help Run for Something screen candidates.
#3: Be a Community Organizer

Do you have a talent for organizing? If so, democracy needs you. One reason the Tea Party was successful was that they organized locally and put pressure on local officials.
#4: Register New Voters

Start now. It's not too early.

In some states, you can become an official volunteer voter registrar. James Williams in Maryland told how he did it in his state. https://t.co/mv1PtliBuV
#5: Be An Institutionalist

Our democratic institutions are under attack. So what should you do? Defend them.

Defend Institutions is #2 on @TimothyDSnyder's list in his book, On Tyranny.

What's an institutionalist and how do you become one? See: https://t.co/GhtIDHIs6D
#6: If you are a teacher consider an assignment requiring students to advocate on behalf of an issue of their choice, or allow / encourage your students to substitute an assignment with a civic engagement activity of some kind.

They are the future. Empower them.
#7: Also, if you're a teacher, assign novels and stories about real-life young people who step and do what the adults seem unable to manage.

#8: Become a Social Engineer.
What do I mean? See: https://t.co/uEVsJwFaQ5
#9: Help People Become Citizens

Support low-cost immigration services, volunteer at an organization such as @CUNYCitizenship, or at organizations that tutor English and civics for the naturalization test.
#10: Subscribe to local newspapers and national journals that do good investigative reporting.

If everyone does this, lots of money will get pumped into news reporting. We need good reporters.
#11: Take lots of mental health breaks. You can't help save democracy if you are worn out and stressed.

Here is a photo from my mental health break today ⤵️

JJ is working hard though, keeping me safe from seagulls.
It's a never-ending cycle:
We push forward. The reactionaries push backward.

If the universe is unfolding as it should, Trump awakened enough people from complacency and spurred us to treasure our democracy and take the necessary steps to preserve it.
https://t.co/F8RzeQpGaP
This thread is now a blog post, here: https://t.co/V2fu3J0AYv

More from Teri Kanefield

Reading recommendation: Rand Corp, "The Russian Firehose of Falsehoods Propaganda Model," includes advice on how to counter a rapid and continuous stream of lies.
https://t.co/1Jg5CvgrJC

1/

The liar has a “shameless willingness” to tell outrageous lies that lots of people know are lies.

The liar doesn’t care about consistency.
He doesn’t care if it’s obvious he’s lying.
https://t.co/C08paJsKTT
In fact, that's the whole point.

Putin perfected the method.

2/

It seems to come naturally to Trump.

@TimothyDSnyder tells how reporters were often so astonished by Putin's outrageous lies, that they focused on the lies instead of Putin's latest atrocities.

The lies became the news.
The actual news gets pushed off the stage.

3/

The goal is the “disruption of truthful reporting and messaging.”
https://t.co/C08paJsKTT

That's why Trump really wants an actual trial, and why he was so annoyed with the Supreme Court (and other courts) refusing to hear the case.

He wants a stage for the lies.

4/

From the Rand study: The Firehose of Falsehood technique “entertains, confuses and overwhelms the audience.”

I think the "entertainment" part applies to the GOP leadership who know Trump is lying but cheer the lies because they are so destructive.

5/
January 6th will be a freak show. Biden will become president because the only way to stop it would be for the House to agree, and that won't happen.

Going forward, the GOP becomes even more dangerous and radicalized.


A few hopeful points:

The GOP could very well lose control of the Senate.

Because these GOP Senators will force a vote, the GOP may fracture, with moderates forced out. While this radicalizes the party, they lose


A few reasons. As @ProfBrianKalt points out, refusing to seat them because they say the election wasn't valid gives credence to the lie that the election wasn't valid.

Moreover, there's no authority to refuse to seat an elected rep for telling lies. .


. . . which is what refusing to seat them would amount to.

The Democrats say, "You are doing really bad things so we won't seat you."

See the problem with that?

(1) It's illegal. The House doesn't get to decide who is seated. The states send their own reps.

moreover . . .

(2) If you say, "The House gets to refuse to seat a person who tells a lie about the election," where does that lead?

If things continue this direction, the political divide will not longer be liberal v. conservative.

The divide will be pro- democracy v. anti-democracy. . .
KM asks why the GOP leadership is terrified of losing.

(Both Lindsay Graham and Matt Gaetz said if the GOP loses this election, they'll never win again.)

GOP is a minority party. If they lose power, they lose the ability to manipulate systems to keep minority control.

1/


The fear is also explained by Richard Hofstader, who wrote the classic work⤵️

Hofstadter reviewed American politics from before the founding of the nation through McCarthyism. He noticed a pattern among an impassioned minority on the fringes of the political spectrum.

2/


He called their behavior the “paranoid style” in politics.

Those embracing the paranoid style of politics believe that unseen satanic forces are trying to destroy something larger in which they belong.

3/

According to Hofstadter, the “something larger” to which they belong is generally phrased as “the American way of life.”

They “feel dispossessed” and that “America has been largely taken away from them and their kind.”

4/

They therefore adopt extreme measures. They will stop at nothing to prevent what they see as an impending calamity.

Remember, Hofstadter published this in the early 1960s.

5/

More from Society

I’ll address every nonsense argument and lie used to defend the suicidal gender ideology Thats in vogue today:

3:45 - “So what if you don’t have gametes?”

It’s called a birth defect. You’re still male or female.


~5:00 *nonsense trying to say the sexes of seahorses could be swapped coz male carry the eggs*

male doesn’t produce eggs, he produces the sperm. He’s still the male. If I impregnated a chick then carried the amniotic sac in a backpack ‘til the baby was done I’ll still be male🤦‍♂️

5:10 - we could say there’s 4 sexes of fruit fly cause there’s 3 producers of different sized sperm

No. They’re still producing sperm. They’re males. This is idiotic. Is this whole video like this? (Probably. 99% likely. Abandon hope.)

~6:10 - hermaphroditism and sequential hermaphroditism exists therefore....

No. Some animals being hermaphrodites, which is meaningless w/o the existence of binary sex to contrast it to, still doesn’t make gender ideology or transgenderism valid.

Intersex ≠ transgenderism 🙄

6:20 - bilateral gynandromorphism is a disorder in some species (not in humans). Has nothing to do w/ “gender” or transgenderism.

Ova-testes in humans are also a disorder, usually found in those w/ the karyotype disorders that you ppl also try to appropriate (extra X’s/Y’s).

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